Israel Bombs Hamas Buildings in Gaza, Killing 5

STEVEN ERLANGER

Sunday

May 27, 2007 at 6:25 AM

Israel bombed a series of Hamas buildings and arrested another Palestinian cabinet minister.

JERUSALEM, May 26 — Israel bombed a series of Hamas facilities in Gaza on Saturday, killing at least five Palestinians and wounding six, and arrested another Palestinian cabinet minister, Wasfi Kabaha, a member of Hamas, at his home in the occupied West Bank.

Some of the bombings occurred in rapid sequence in daylight; those were on buildings used by the paramilitary Executive Force, a parallel police force dominated by Hamas. The dead, along with most of the wounded, were pulled from a building in the Zeitun district of Gaza City.

The other daylight strikes were on the Shati refugee camp and the southern city of Rafa, as well as a training camp in Khan Yunis. Hamas has ordered its men to stay out of buildings affiliated with it, but apparently some were still using the buildings. Hamas leaders are not sleeping at home or using their normal offices. Hamas leaders also warned against grouping and using cellphones.

Doctors at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza said two of the wounded were in critical condition.

Israeli security forces shot and killed two Palestinian gunmen who opened fire at them on Saturday night in Sheik Said, the Arab East Jerusalem neighborhood, near the separation barrier that Israel is building. Israeli police and ambulance services said two Israeli officers were wounded, one seriously. A Palestinian bystander was also seriously wounded and later died.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by Al Aksa Martyrs’ Brigades of Fatah, according to the Palestinian news agency Maan.

Israel said it launched a total of eight strikes; in one of them, before dawn, three Hamas militants were killed in their car in Gaza City. Hamas television said the three had launched rockets against Israel.

Israel said the strikes were a response to Hamas’s decision to finally break an uneven cease-fire and to launch Qassam rockets against neighboring Israeli farms and towns, like Sderot. Previously, Hamas had largely kept the cease-fire, but did nothing to prevent other groups like Islamic Jihad and the Aksa Martyrs Brigades from firing them.

Since May 15, the Israeli Army said, more than 225 rockets have been launched toward Israel. Not all landed in Israel, but one Israeli woman has been killed, and two more Israelis seriously wounded by shrapnel. Several thousand residents of the town of Sderot, with a population of 24,000, have left the city.

By Saturday evening there were 12 Qassam launches; two landed in Israel, one on a house in Sderot, and there was one person wounded, the Israeli Army said.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, was in Gaza trying to get all factions to agree to a renewed cease-fire with Israel. So far, the factions have insisted that any new cease-fire cover the West Bank, as well. Those that have fired rockets into Israel say they do so to respond to Israeli military activities in the West Bank. Mr. Abbas says the rockets “are pointless and needless,” and he has also called on Israel to show restraint.

Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said Israel would not “reward” Hamas and the others for breaking the Gaza cease-fire by extending it to the West Bank. Some on the Israeli left have called for testing the idea, but the weak Olmert government would face severe political criticism if it agreed to a West Bank cease-fire now.

Mr. Abbas is said to be discussing a monthlong truce in Gaza with the factions that could be extended later to the West Bank. But on Saturday, after the raids, Hamas issued a statement saying that it would “not offer a free truce to the Zionist occupation” and urging “all factions to unite behind the resistance and direct painful strikes at the Zionist occupation.”

At a rally in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza on Saturday, a Hamas leader, Nizar Rayyan, criticized Mr. Abbas for trying to end the rocket fire. “We will not listen to him,” Mr. Rayyan said, adding, “Abbas hates rockets just as we hate the Jews,” and he “does not like resistance and he does not like jihad.”

“He is a man who wants us to surrender,” Mr. Rayyan said.

It is clear that Israel is using the opportunity created by Hamas’s decision to join in firing the Qassams to strike at Hamas and Islamic Jihad in particular. Israeli military officials say they have identified numerous targets and would like to use graduated pressure on Gaza, including limited incursions of ground troops into northern Gaza, where the Qassams are launched.

So far, Mr. Olmert has not authorized the use of ground troops, although there has been at least one intelligence-gathering raid in central Gaza.

Since early May, Israel has hit 12 compounds of the Executive Force and killed 11 of its members, including the five on Saturday, said a spokesman for the force, Islam Shahwan.

Since May 17, when Israel escalated its strikes, 47 Palestinians have been killed by air attacks, including 15 civilians, seven of them under the age of 16, said Dr. Moawiya Hassanain, a spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. More than 170 have been wounded.

The arrest on Saturday of the second cabinet minister, Mr. Kabaha, took place at his house in Jenin, in the northern West Bank, before dawn. His portfolio includes issues relating to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

His wife told Al Jazeera that the Israeli troops searched their house. “After we opened the door, they took Wasfi’s ID card and made sure he was the one they wanted,” she said.

On Thursday, Israeli forces arrested 33 Palestinians in the West Bank, nearly all affiliated with Hamas, including another cabinet minister, three legislators and three mayors. Ms. Eisin said then that Israel had “concrete evidence” that those arrested were “connected to terrorist activities” that went beyond political work, including illegal fund-raising for Hamas military actions.

Those arrested included the education minister, Nasser Eddin al-Shaer of Hamas. He was also arrested last August, then released in late September for lack of evidence. Israel says it has new evidence.

From that sweep of arrests last summer, which began in June following the capture of an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, more than 40 Hamas officials remain in detention, including Aziz Dweik, the speaker of the Palestinian legislature. None has been brought to trial.

While both the European Union and the United States consider Hamas a terrorist organization, the European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said he did not consider the new rounds of arrests justified, and the State Department said it viewed the arrests with “concern.”

“I warn the Zionist regime and its supporters that this is not like last year, and if you make the mistake of attacking an Islamic country like Lebanon, the powerful hand of people in the region will pull you down,” he said, directing his remarks to Israel.